Perhaps you bought some illegal narcotics on the Silk Road half a decade ago, back when that digital black market for every contraband imaginable was still online and bustling. You might already regret that decision, for any number of reasons. After all, the four bitcoins you spent on that bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms would now be worth about as much as an Alfa Romeo. But one group of researchers wants to remind you of yet another reason to rue that transaction: If you weren't particularly careful in how you spent your cryptocurrency, the evidence of that drug deal may still be hanging around in plain view of law enforcement, even years after the Silk Road was torn off the dark web.

Researchers at Qatar University and the country's Hamad Bin Khalifa University earlier this week published findings that show just how easy it may be to dredge up evidence of years-old bitcoin transactions when spenders didn't carefully launder their payments. In well over 100 cases, they could connect someone's bitcoin payment on a dark web site to that person's public account. In more than 20 instances, they say, they could easily link those public accounts to transactions specifically on the Silk Road, finding even some purchasers' specific names and locations.

"The retroactive operational security of bitcoin is low," says Qatar University researcher Husam Al Jawaheri. "When things are recorded in the blockchain, you can go back in history and reveal this information, to break the anonymity of users."

Technically, you're spot on I suppose. If they don't catch you with the mushrooms, I'm not real sure how/what they could charge you with. The intent or act of purchasing something on a website I don't think is actually a crime until you gain possession of the illegal substance. I could be wrong.

That said, the not traceable bit that gets throw around about bitcoin is a bit overstated. I think that was the intent of the article and OP. Again, I could be wrong though.

Just noticed there were a lot of bits there. I've got a new bitcoin bit.

In one month, anti-malware software company Malwarebytes said it stopped almost 250 million attempts to place coin-mining malware on to PCs.

Symantec said it had seen a "tenfold" increase in the amount of malicious code connected with crypto-cash.

Cyber-thieves are using both dedicated software, hacked websites and emails to snare victims.

Malwarebytes told the BBC that its security software was now, on average, stopping about eight million attempts a day by coin-mining code to compromise users' PCs.

Much of this coin-mining software was found on websites that had been hacked, to give attackers the ability to install their own code. One researcher found almost 2,500 sites hosting mining code.

Other cyber-thieves have hijacked extensions and add-ons for web browsing programs to insert the malicious code. Once on a computer, the malware often runs processors at close to 100% to get as much mining work done as possible. On smartphones, this can mean batteries are depleted very quickly.